Will this discovery provide an unlimited egg supply and an anti-aging elixir, or the ingredient for more embryo destruction?

CELESTE McGOVERN

Human eggs apparently now can be produced in a lab dish from stem cells derived from adult women’s ovaries.

That is the promise of groundbreaking research by Harvard Medical School professor Jonathan Tilly.

The finding raises possibilities such as a limitless supply of lab-grown human eggs for experimentation and fertilization from one woman, as well as some sort of embryonic stem cell-derived, anti-aging elixir.

Tilly’s research team at Massachusetts General Hospital’s Vincent Center for Reproductive Biology published their findings — which turn a half century of embryology orthodoxy on its head — in the March issue of Nature Medicine. The dogma that women inherit a fixed “bank account” of irreplaceable eggs at birth that dwindles until it expires in menopause has apparently been rendered obsolete by the team’s isolation of egg-producing stem cells from the ovarian tissue of adult women undergoing “sex-change” operations in Japan.

Now it is British scientists who intend to carry out the next step of research, work that is banned from receiving federal funding in the United States: the creation of human embryos from eggs derived from those stem cells for experimentation, freezing and destruction.

“The test of an egg is to show that it can be fertilized,” said Dr. Richard Anderson of the MRC Centre for Reproductive Health at Edinburgh University, Scotland. “We see in those initial days after fertilization, in its development, if it is really an egg that can do its business.”

Anderson and his colleague, reproductive biologist Evelyn Telfer, have been working on ripening immature human eggs from adult women in vitro. Now they are collaborating with the Harvard researchers. Anderson confirmed that they have taken preliminary steps to acquire a research license from the Human Fertility and Embryology Authority (HFEA) — the watchdog organization that grants research licenses to “fertility” clinics throughout the U.K. — to allow them to experiment on human embryos made from ovarian stem cell-derived eggs as well as from their own artificially ripened eggs. They expect to be under way within the year.

Embryology teaches that a human embryo ― from inception to eight weeks ― is an individual boy or girl with his or her own unique DNA and normal life expectancy. The Church teaches that “human life must be respected and protected absolutely from the moment of conception. From the first moment of his existence, a human being must be recognized as having the rights of a person ― among which is the inviolable right of every innocent being to life” (Catechism, 2270).

The Catechism also teaches that “It is immoral to produce human embryos intended for exploitation as disposable biological material” (2275).

The HFEA already has approved numerous experiments on human embryos, including the creation of embryos for the sole purpose of deriving stem cells, for enhancing genetic-screening abilities for in vitro fertilization (IVF) and the creation of “interspecies” embryos.

Researchers at Newcastle Upon Tyne have an HFEA research license to generate embryonic stem cells from “cloned embryos produced by transferring human cells into rabbit eggs.”

Scottish Biomedical in Glasgow was granted a research license to produce “bulk” human embryonic stem cells for drug screening. It tells drug companies that it “would be happy to clone and develop specific mutants to complete your assays.”

‘Experimenting With Humans’

The HFEA declares on its website that “human embryos have special moral status (although not full human status) and should be afforded legal protection” and that it is “the role of the regulator to ensure this protection is provided.”

“I don’t think the HFEA has ever met a human-embryo research project they didn’t like,” said David Prentice, senior fellow for life sciences at the Family Research Council’s Center for Human Life and Bioethics in Washington, D.C. “All this is, essentially, is experimenting with human beings.”

Prentice adds that such a license to create human embryos is “predicated on destroying them after two weeks.” The HFEA currently restricts human embryonic experimentation to 14 days.

An egg that can do the business of being fertilized is not necessarily safe for IVF, confirmed Anderson. “Implantation of these embryos into women seeking children is a long way off.”

But embryo researcher Tilly is flush with the possibilities from his discovery of ovarian stem cells — from bottomless egg banks to youth-restoring ovarian stem-cell transplants. When maintained outside the body, he told Nature Video, the cells “are more than happy to make eggs on their own. And if we can guide that process correctly, I think it opens up the chance that some time in the future we might get to the point of having an unlimited source of human eggs — that a woman could come in, have a small biopsy taken from her ovary for us to retrieve these cells, and once we get these cells out, we can take 100 of them and make a million of them.”

What Purpose?

But what purpose could a million human eggs in a laboratory serve?

None good, thinks Father Alfred Cioffi of the National Catholic Bioethics Center. “There is one word for this: eugenics. Europe is reverting to the blinding fever that led to the Second World War.”

It raises the specter of a “New Eve” in a new era of asexual reproduction and in research: one woman progenitor with one gene pool.

But for Tilly, who has received funding from the American Foundation for Aging Research, the bountiful stock of human eggs is less exciting than what he has called the “grander golden chalice” of the anti-aging potential of these cells: Theoretically, ovarian stem cells might be engaged to coax aging human ovaries into functioning as younger ones, not necessarily for reproduction, but for the health benefits that attend fertility.

Interestingly, some of Tilly’s earlier research showed that bone marrow or blood cell transplants from adult fertile mice could restore fertility in mice rendered infertile by chemotherapy. Several studies have supported the findings and raise the possibility that the ovarian stem cells Tilly has isolated may even originate in bone marrow, just like scientists have shown that sperm-generating cells are in bone marrow, as are liver, blood and other stem cells.

And that raises the possibility of research bypassing the creation of human embryos altogether, the Family Research Council’s Prentice points out. Ethical therapies using adult stem cells have proven far more effective and have advanced far more quickly than those based on embryonic stem cells.

But Anderson dismissed the bone-marrow research as “quite a bit of conjecture,” and the tide of research, for now, is in the direction of mass embryo growth and destruction.

Agree with N. It is very nice to have cures for cancer and thanks to them I am alive. Alive but infertile from the age of 17. Try to imagine what it is like to tell every new boyfriend that there is no chance of an offspring together. Or what it is like to see everybody around having children and asking whether you do not want them. You have no right to impose your views on the rest of the population. If they told me tomorrow that I can get my stem cells injected into my ovaries and be fertile again, I would do that straight away and thankfully

Posted by N on Thursday, May, 17, 2012 6:34 PM (EST):

try having premature ovarian failure at 30 and having your dreams of having a family swept away from you. studies like this are the only things that give us hope.

Posted by Yuri Koszarycz on Tuesday, May, 15, 2012 1:48 AM (EST):

WOW! It was to be expected in a Catholic News blog that the reaction would be all “doom and gloom” and the world is going “to hell and highwater”... In fact the crazies were working overtime in their comments about god’s vengence and Armaggedon… looney tunes, as always!
In fact this scientific breakthrough is to be taken for what it is: a scientific milestone in understanding human ovulation and the potential that positive experimentation may give to women suffering all sorts of debilitating issues preventing pregnancy: ovarian cancers, cysts, and the natural ageing of eggs for possible fertilisation, etc. etc. WHY is it that anything positive that comes from scientific research regarding fertility or sexuality is immediately greeted with negativity, skepticism, and a “NAY” from catholic circles…. Let us wait and see what further develops from this ground-breaking research before starting to scream out “EUGENICS!!”

Posted by Lane on Saturday, Apr, 28, 2012 1:51 AM (EST):

This wouldn’t be such a great discover if women weren’t systematically devalued as human beings because of their finite fertility.

Posted by Motherboard on Wednesday, Apr, 25, 2012 7:26 AM (EST):

Okay, I was with you all the way up to “What purpose?” I think a history lesson about the Eugenics Movement is in order here:

1. In the United States, women labeled “feebleminded” by the state were sterilized against their will and sometimes without their knowledge. Many of these women also, coincidentally, just happened to be racial minorities and minors who had experienced out of wedlock pregnancies.

2. Some states passed laws forbidding people with certain disabilities from marrying, or proposed taxes on disabled people who wished to marry and have children, based on the assumption that they would produce defective children who would later cost the taxpayers money.

3. Women with disabilities who became pregnant were encouraged to have abortions.

4. Americans were given examples of what “healthy human stock” looked like (white people with no physical or mental abnormalities) and encouraged to breed for “the good of the human race.” All others were discouraged from reproducing.

5. The Nazis represented the most extreme version of the eugenics movement—the actual imprisonment and annihilation of all who did not meet the criteria of the “master race.”

Now, I haven’t heard any fertility clinic say that people SHOULDN’T reproduce. And while the possibility exists that this new egg-producing technology could be used to produce a “master race,” it could also be used to cure infertility in women and discover cures for various diseases. The point is, any technology can be used for good or ill. Nuclear technology can be used to generate power, vastly improving the quality of lives for people all over the world. It can also be used to kill them.

I accept the article’s premise that research on fertilized human embryos is morally wrong, but I am skeptical that it will automatically lead to our society embracing the principles of eugenics.

Posted by Ursula Wegmann on Tuesday, Apr, 24, 2012 11:08 PM (EST):

A very interesting book called “Promises of New Biotechnologies”, published 2011 https://www.createspace.com/3698701
Preface by William E May
reveals all of that research- I think this book is a must read for EVERY CATHOLIC

Posted by Mary Lark Corbett on Monday, Apr, 23, 2012 9:34 PM (EST):

If ovarian stem cells can originate in bone marrow, then could this proposition be both possible and morally acceptable? I’ve heard it is possible, or close to being possible, to regrow organs. If, someone donated the tissue necessary to clone a uterus, could someone, who had a hysterectomy morally be able to have a uterus implanted, and then have her own ovarian stem cells, originated from her own bone marrow, be implanted in her uterus?

Posted by Joan Olmsted on Monday, Apr, 23, 2012 8:34 PM (EST):

all I can say is in the end GOD WINS. But what scary stuff is happening on the way there.

Posted by Dave S. on Monday, Apr, 23, 2012 7:02 PM (EST):

Would that they direct their resources to cures for cancer, heart disease, etc. Let the Lord take care of fertility.

Posted by L.T. on Monday, Apr, 23, 2012 4:50 PM (EST):

This is absolutely disgusting when a human being pretends to be God. Anderson, Telfer, HFEA, asexual reproduction…it doesn’t end here. Anderson said this was “scary”, so I say please STOP THIS EXPERIMENTATION with human beings, in whatever state they may be in.This is mocking God.

Posted by David Carlon on Monday, Apr, 23, 2012 2:57 PM (EST):

Human monsters have always sought glory playing God… we are on the precipice of Hell on earth as American and British Mengele’s slice and dice captive victims at will and with impunity. When will our Incarnate Lord decide that enough is enough? 1 Billion babies murdered worldwide in the womb since the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution… sigh.

Posted by jim sekerak on Monday, Apr, 23, 2012 12:14 PM (EST):

The acceptance of infanticide has arrived so quickly that it has left me fearful that the two week limitation on embryo research currently imposed by HFEA will evaporate even more quickly. Neither does the lack of ethical reflection re. the same issue mitigate my emotion. I am more inclined to accept that the meaning of a recently penned axiom, “Silence is not golden, it’s yellow.” will be borne out.

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